Working for Lifestyle/Extras
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| Mon, 11-20-2006 - 11:13am |
Hi Ladies :)
This is my first time on this debate board and I have been dying to jump into some of the topics, but I feel as though they are sooooo long (one in particular is over 1000 replies, yikes!) that starting my own specific one might work out better.
Anyhow, a recurring theme here seems to be what Moms should and shouldn't be going to work for. It seems some are of the opinion that is OK for Mom to work if she must to pay her bills but NOT if its to afford a nice car, house, good neighborhood. This is considered keeping up with the Johnses (who are they???) and thats bad.
Well, I want to know what in the heck is wrong with a women working to have nice things? I don't mean working and leaving baby in child care 16 hours a day, everyday...thats pretty extreme.
I enjoyed a certain lifestyle before having a child, should I have downsized that lifestyle once baby came so I didn't have to work? What about me *wanting* to maintain a certain lifestyle for myself, my husband, and my child makes me a (a) workaholic or (b) striving to keep up with the Joneses?
Don't some people (like myself) simply enjoy living in a nice place with nice things and want their children to have the same experience?
So please, anyone who thinks a women is wrong for WOH if she is not doing so to financially survive but does it to maintain a certain lifestyle...whats wrong with this?
Thanks all :)

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Well, now you are totally changing what you said before.
PumpkinAngel
In my personal view I don't see how I'm changing my view. IMO, anything given to a child 3 and under is a "toy" - children learn though playing - be it pots and pans, a ball, dolls, flashcards, books, even electronic "educational" toys. The cards I spoke specifically about are considered "hands-on" learning - just like any other toy.
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And there cannot be any benefit beyond that?
<< I wouldn't read Harry Potter to my 3 year old, because it's not age appropriate.>>
I wouldn't either but I don't see that as "one or two levels above their reading ability" that I mentioned - that's more like 5 or 6 level. But I don't see a problem with reading a chapter a night from a beginning chapter book. I don't see the problem with reading a chapter a night from Little House on the Prairie to a 4 yo.
I'm at the point where I'm pretty much done with this debate about flashcards. I never saw flashcards as a substitute for books, just another option for play and learning. I personal see the cards as something that can be beneficial on many levels. I was trying to debate that there was more to them than drilling and rote mem. But it really doesn't seem like to many people can look beyond the stereotypical use of flash cards.
that sounds pretty. mine is ugly,lol. a thicker white gold band with 19 on one side and 82 on the other. the center is an emerald green - school's color....i have no clue what mom paid but nowadays kids are getting them sooner,too. my friend's ds is only in the 9th grade and ordered his already.
Again, I never argued for a separate track in the younger grades, for gifted, talented or simply ahead.. It would have made me happy if the needs had been met, any which way.
However, how is it stigmatizing, if within the regular classroom grouping ad hoc groups are formed at various times of the day, for various purposes, some of which match kids by where they are in the curriculum. To take your science example, if you have 3 kids who are expected to write 10 pages as opposed to 2, would it not make sense to have them form a group for an hour to brainstorm together, for example? Where is the harm? It is not as if it won't be obvious anyway that they are, in fact, performing differently than the kids writing 2 pages.
IME, the kids DO notice and are highly aware. It seems to be damaging to low and high achievers alike when the adults in charge try to pretend that the differences do not matter.
To take another dd example (if we ever get done here, you will have a good overview of her entire school carreer), English class, EFL, first year is the 2nd grade. Problem: Dd is bilingual and speaking, reading and writing far above grade level (meaning, she would have been above grade even in an English-language school). The teachers feel that she should participate in the class normally, and contribute by setting an example for the others, demonstrating pronunciation and be "challenged" by reading aloud to the class sometimes. Several months later, several parents complain rather bitterly to me that their kids are depressed and dejected because the kids don't feel they can ever catch up to dd. One boy harangued his mother and asked why she had not made sure he learned English too, before going to school.
Meanwhile dd felt like a complete freak and was not learning a darn thing, of course, other than how to deal gracefully with 14 other kids hating her.
After a year of this, it was finally agreed to let the bilingual kids (there were 3, but the other 2 could not read at the beginning) work together in a group on some different materials. Not only were the bilingual kids happier (and actually learning something, a benefit of going to school often overlooked by educators), but the rest of the kids were much happier too, according both to the teachers and the parents. However, there was intially great objection to this solution, on the grounds that the bilingual kids were not more special than the others, that they needed social skills, that if we looked at the whole child . . ., it would be stigmatizing (either to the bilinguals for being singled out, or to the others for not knowing English, opinions varied) and yet it worked very nicely for all concerned.
If parents do it all the time
DD is six
She rolls her eyes
"Don't talk like that"
she huffs and sighs
But what she doesn't know is plain
These rhymes have sharpened up her brain
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